Sartre holds that even capitulating to the Other expresses free subjectivity.
Evidence
Th e Other threatens us with the power of reducing us to an object in her world, and yet we disarm the Other of her threat by reaffi rming our subjectivity through our own consciousness of, and response to, the Other who threatens us. Even to succumb to the will of the Other is, on Sartre’s account, an expression of one’s free subjectivity. Indeed, only death can render us fi nally and fully an object for the Other. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 642
Categorization
- QUESTION: This is a surprisingly strong version of freedom — worth probing against Beauvoir’s critique that certain material situations genuinely foreclose choice.
- XREF: Directly sets up the Beauvoir-Sartre rift over whether oppression ever makes real freedom impossible, a core thread of this book. — connects to: Sartre’s freedom is structurally immune to genuine removal by the Other. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 641; For Sartre all relations with others serve self-protection and self-foundation — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 631; Sartre made freedom and personal responsibility the burden of his resistance allegory — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 511 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Sartre holds that being-for-others remains derivative of being-for-itself
#corroborates(0.85) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 260 - Sartre made freedom and personal responsibility the burden of his resistance allegory
#expands(0.78) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 511 - Sartre calls being-for-others characteristics unrealizables
#corroborates(0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1235 - Sartre reinterpreted Freudian primal scenes as exercises of freedom
#expands(0.72) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 690